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On making an honest shilling

Some men were arrested last week for making money. It would not have been a crime if they’d chosen to go about it the way you and I do – waking up every morning and beating the odds to get to work, with the odds getting creative everyday-one day it’s rain, the other it’s an ailing car, then it’s an ailing body, or fatigue, or it’s that voice in your head pleading for you to sleep “5 more minutes”. We all know that “5 minutes” in morning sleep lingua means 45 minutes that’ll be followed by you running around in a state of panic. We beat all those odds and go out to exchange hours of hard work for Shillings.

Sometimes the work is rewarding. ‘Sometimes’ because the rest of the time, you and I are earning our bread through sacrifice. And sweat. And frustration. From those selling tomatoes, to those riding a boda boda, to the guys shouting dusk till dawn for people to enter their taxi, to the man carrying the heaviest of loads on his back in the taxi park, to the lady sitting all day in a shop waiting for yet another undecided customer, to those racking their brain for a solution to a challenge with an impending deadline, we are all in this. Very few of us do it because, “Oh, it’s my passion. I was born to do this!” For most of us, we must. And it’s the right thing to do. There are mouths to feed, fees to pay, dreams to be facilitated, backs to clothe and while I still have breath in these lungs and the gift of the ability to do some work, I’m going to try and do something about it. You see it in the guy selling handkerchiefs and sweets in the taxi park. You see it in the mother, baby on her back, selling bananas. You see it in the fuel pump attendant. “This isn’t fun but I’m here. It isn’t where I want to be but I’m here. I showed up”

Then you hear of young men arrested for making money. These guys, sure that the rest of us are dumb, set up a machine to print counterfeit money. One Billion dollars’ worth of it. They looked at that guy who sells umbrellas in the rain and thought to themselves, “You fool. All you need to do to make money is hit print”. One Billion dollars. At the rate they were going, they’d probably soon ask Honorable Maria Kiwanuka for the nation’s budget so they can finance it.

Shout out to you going about making an honest Shilling- It isn’t easy but it’s the right thing to do and that counts for something. If not to you, then it will for the people that depend on you.